"Freda Warrington - A Taste of Blood Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warrington Freda)

And then she would overhear comments that destroyed what little
self-esteem she still possessed.


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A Taste


"Madeleine and Fleur are such lovely girls; it's a shame their sister's
so stand-offish. Pretty, I know, but I shouldn't bother, old chap;
she's as miserable as sin."
So the more she hated it, the more she withdrew; and the more
people ignored her, the more she hated it. It was the serpent
gnawing its own tail. Only the dread of incurring Elizabeth's wrath
had kept her from fleeing back to Cambridge weeks ago. Her aunt
and sisters made a great show of despairing of her, and that was the
most painful thing of all.
Yet inside her, besides this incapacitating shyness, there was
something else; a streak of cynicism, almost a contempt for this
social circus. These people were all affectation, so shallow
compared with the ones she really loved. Her father, David and
Anne.
Nearly time to go home, she reminded herself, and everything will
go back to normal… yet that knowledge, however comforting, did
not ease the sick ache of failure within her. And now Madeleine
would begin dragging these awful people back to Cambridge.
I've had enough, she thought suddenly, sitting up. The thought of
drawing attention to herself by leaving the party was almost as bad
as remaining there, but panic won. Charlotte reached the door. No
one seemed to notice, and she made the mistake of glancing back
into the room to make sure.
The stranger, Karl von Wultendorf, was staring straight at her.
In that moment, everything changed. It was as if the world had
ceased to exist for a heartbeat then recreated itself, the same yet


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A Taste


indefinably askew. A shadow was whispering to her…
The attention of any man alarmed her; someone like Clive,
handsome, brash and cynical, was deeply intimidating. But this man
was not merely handsome. He had an aura of dark beauty that
seemed to magnetize the whole room in the most sinister way, as
indifferent to the people who were drawn to him as a candle is to a
moth. It was not his beauty that arrested her so much as his air of
complete self-containment; and the way his gaze cut as softly as a
light beam through everything that separated them—cold and
dispassionate, straight into her soul.